On Not Falling Short

Injury Epidemiology of Falls in Iowa

Nicolas Foss, Ed.D., MS

2025-09-26

Objectives of this talk

Today, we will learn

  • overall statistics on falls
  • survival among patients who fell
  • the distribution of falls across:
    • demographic groups
    • geographic areas

A brief comment about the data

Today, we will use data from the Iowa Trauma Registry from 2020-2024.

  • Not all injured patients are entered in the trauma registry. Go to the Bureau of Emergency Medical and Trauma Services website and look for the Trauma Data Registry page to find the inclusion criteria.
  • Generally, the patients in the trauma registry are of higher acuity.
  • The Iowa Trauma Registry is not the only source of data related to injured patients in Iowa. The Iowa Hospital Association’s Inpatient Outpatient dataset is able to document all injuries including minor injuries that are typically not included in a state government’s modern trauma registry.